A recent study found that a lot of people are motivated to travel based on the “likes” that they’ll get on social media when they post their travel photos. The research took place at the University of Georgia, where they surveyed 758 people about travel and social media.
The researchers were specifically looking to see how sharing “tourism experiences” shape the travel destination choices that people have in mind. In this particular case, all of the people being surveyed were asked about traveling to Cuba, and the researchers wanted to know if their interest in doing so was for the novelty factor.
The researchers found that the people who anticipated more “social return,” ie “the amount of positive social feedback that one’s social media posts will generate,” the more likely they were to have interest in heading to Cuba within the next year. People who didn’t much care about the social return were interested in heading to Cuba within the next decade.
